Ever wondered what a good groupie’s dream vacation might look like? For me, it’s this: hop in a car and road trip it across the country to see shows at some of the most notable music venues in the United States. From theaters where legendary performances have taken place to the tiny hole-in-the-wall spots that every touring band today stops off at, our country has no shortage of killer music venues to put on your bucket list.

A great blog doesn’t just happen.

It takes a lot of focus, learning and writing and a whole lot of patience – even when your background and professional career is in writing and content development. Every day I’m working hard to make The Good Groupie a great – and unique – music blog for the fellow music fans who read it.

I don’t read a lot of blogs, music or otherwise, with a thank you page…but it feels appropriate for me because like your favorite album of all time, this blog didn’t just happen on its own. I had a lot of help, support and guidance along the way to make The Good Groupie what it is today.

Here are the liner notes and thank yous for The Good Groupie:

The Blogcademy

When I first discovered The Blogcademy, I knew I had to go. A two-day blogging workshop led by three of the most notable bloggers out there? Yes please! Just a few months later a class in Austin was scheduled, and I grabbed a spot immediately.

Attending The Blogcademy was a turning point. Up until then, I was just a girl who was writing a blog for a hobby. Gala, Kat and Shauna showed me I could be doing so much more. My weekend with them was the exact kick start I needed to get serious about blogging. Their two-day wokshop flipped the switch on my ability to dream up and produce quality content. Without them, I’d probably still be languishing in half-ass blogger land. Thank you, Gala, Kat and Shauna, for everything you taught me.

Sarah Morgan’s Badass Babes E-Course & Blog Club

If The Blogcademy was my kick start to serious blogging, Sarah Morgan’s Badass Babes E-Course was my finishing school. As a recipient of a scholarship to her first course, Sarah helped me elevate my blog concept and content to the next level.

She also gave me all the nuts and bolts I needed to build thegoodgroupie.com from scratch. From tips and tricks on social media marketing and SEO to answering all my “how do I…?” CSS questions, Sarah is THE blogging rock star in my world. Without her Badass Babes E-Course and continued support in the Blog Club, I never would have moved The Good Groupie to being a self-hosted site. I cannot thank her enough for awarding me a scholarship, sharing her expertise and continuing to be a killer resource.

Quiet Company & Keeton Coffman

As a supporter of local music, I see a lot of bands from around Texas. Two I share frequently are Quiet Company and Keeton Coffman. Each time I see either live, I step back and think, “These guys are chasing their passion. They’re out there playing music, sharing their talent with others. If they can do it, I can do it too.”

I don’t think I’ve ever told them this, but they inspire me to write. They inspire me to chase my dream of someday publishing a book. They make it all seem so much more attainable because I’m essentially watching them do the same thing with their music. Without either to inspire me, I wouldn’t keep trying to make The Good Groupie better. (Thanks, guys.)

The Girls

I affectionately call my readers good groupies, but these girls – Katie, Samantha, Lauren, Jenny and Melanie – are THE good groupies. They are my biggest cheerleaders, always encouraging me to do more and dream big when it comes to my writing. They let me endlessly bounce ideas off them, ask for their feedback and don’t get too annoyed when I play the quintessential blogger on our music trips and insist on taking (or re-taking) a trillion photos. Love you girls.

My Readers

A blog is nothing without readers – especially readers who don’t just come back regularly but also engage with you on a personal level. From writing The Good Groupie, I have befriended so many amazing music fans who are just like me.

If you follow me on social media, have ever left a comment on a post, sent me an email or play along with #bestsongallweek each Friday…THANK YOU. Getting to write about music for fun and have people reading along is just about the coolest thing ever.

Special Thanks

And finally, a few special thank yous to some lovely women who helped make my move to thegoodgroupie.com possible:

Thank you to Amanda Guthrie, aka AJG Photography Etc., for all the GORGEOUS photos you see around here. I totally lucked out having a photographer who loves to play for a lifelong best friend.

Thank you to Chrystina Noel for letting me pester her with questions about her own site and for her keen eye for detail, from blogging design to typos, as she helped me edit the content on my site…just because I asked. (I appreciate it more than you know, Chrystina.)

And thank you to my mom, Tammy, who also helped me clean up my content before launching – nothing is better when you’re a writer than having a mother who will print out your blog, grab her red pen and go to town editing. (Just wait til I give you the book to edit, mom!)

It’s hard to say whether or not my 2015 SXSW was a success. I saw the no. 1 band on my “to see” list, Colony House, but I stood in the rain and mud to watch their set thanks to the Friday afternoon downpours. (Still totally worth it.) I successfully parked on Austin’s city streets without getting a ticket (always an achievement in my world after this), but it was a 1.5 mile trek just from the car to downtown, never mind all the miles clocked running from venue to venue. And I just freakin’ went instead of watching from the social media sidelines like I have the last few years, but I only conquered 1.5 days before I was out.

I guess we’ll call it a draw.

Nonetheless, running the streets of downtown Austin with Lauren and Katie for as long as I lasted was blast, as always. Nothing is better than hanging out with a few of your music besties in the live music capital of the world. We saw lots of great stuff. We heard about lots of great stuff. And we ate a lot of really great food.

Here’s the wins, the losses and everything in between from our SXSW 2015 adventure: [Read more…]

Personally, I’m in the indifferent-if-not-slightly-sad crowd. For as long as I can remember, Tuesdays have been album release day. New music gave Tuesdays something to cheer for and made them a little more special. I know I’m in the millennial minority here, but I still love getting my hands on a physical album and flipping through the liner notes so I have a hard time buying the IFPI’s logic about digital releases impacting this decision. I also second the notion that this move has the potential to further marginalize truly independent (ie not “indie”) and local music releases.

But I’m getting away from the point of today’s post – new music. [Read more…]

“Music, you know, true music – it chooses you.” I have always loved this line from Almost Famous because from the first time I heard it, it rang true for me. All the music that is my favorite has found its way into my life by chance or accident. It has chosen me.

Keeton Coffman is no exception to that musical truth. If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you know I happened across Keeton’s former band, The 71’s, one night when they played a show with Quiet Company. Keeton’s charm and charisma as the band front man captured my attention, and it started a musical journey that took me through a successful Kickstarter campaign, a band break up and his exciting venture into a solo career – one that is taking a giant leap forward this week and that I am excited to share with you. [Read more…]

It’s festival week for this good groupie, and I couldn’t be more excited. In 48 hours, Miss Delaney and I will be hitting to road for Oklahoma to go to Center of the Universe Festival this year. I can’t wait to be back in my other home city, listening to fantastic music under the glowing Tulsa skyline Friday and Saturday nights.

They have some great headliners this year – I’m particularly excited about Fitz & the Tantrums and finally seeing Young the Giant again (it’s been about four years!), but there are PLENTY of other amazing bands I’m excited to finally check out, hopefully meet in person or see live again. [Read more…]

For Taylor Swift, the future of music might be a love story…but for The Good Groupie? The future of music is entirely up to music fans like me.

If TSwift’s op/ed in the Wall Street Journal isn’t on your radar, let me be the one to put it there. I heard a brief mention of it on morning TV yesterday as I was getting ready for work, and by the time I got to take a peek at Twitter, my timeline was littered with freshly composed rebuttals.

So naturally, I’m here to offer one more – but not as a music journalist, industry insider or label exec because I am none of those. I’m here to tell you what she got right and what she got wrong as a music fan – the exact person she spends half the article talking about; the exact person who controls the destiny of music right now.

First things firstIn the interest of full disclosure, let me say this up front: I’m about 98% indifferent to Taylor Swift. I don’t love her, but I also don’t hate her. She’s just kind of there in my music world, floating around, doing stuff, whatever. Sometimes I listen and don’t mind a song (“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” – that ‘we’ is damn catchy). Other times, I never ever ever want to hear it again (“Love Story” – baby, just say no).

Considering her audience, I think she’s a decent songwriter. Taylor’s songs don’t speak to me lyrically, but I recognize that she has a knack for writing tunes about the things teenage girls deeply care about in a way that speaks to them. And despite her laundry list of ex-boyfriends, I think she’s one of the better female musician role models out there. Plus, anyone who actually writes or co-writes and plays their music automatically gets a dose of respect in my book.

That said, I don’t think she can sing live worth a damn (or TV audio is incredibly unkind to her) and that sometimes her PR machine works in overdrive to keep her relevant (and this op/ed might be exactly that since she hasn’t broken any high profile hearts in the past month).

What Taylor got right“…you should know that you’re reading the opinion of an enthusiastic optimist…”

I really do appreciate that as someone who has lived through an incredibly crazy time to be on a label, TSwift survived the last nine years as well as she has – and still manages to be optimistic about the future of the crazy industry she works in. I don’t think I could be that rosy about a crumbling industry desperately trying to rebuild itself.“The way I see it, fans view music the way they view their relationships. Some music is just for fun, a passing fling (the ones they dance to at clubs and parties for a month while the song is a huge radio hit, that they will soon forget they ever danced to). Some songs and albums represent seasons of our lives, like relationships that we hold dear in our memories but had their time and place in the past. However, some artists will be like finding “the one.” We will cherish every album they put out until they retire and we will play their music for our children and grandchildren.”

Spot on, TSwift.

As a music fan who will never stop championing listeners to tell me why they love the bands they love – the specific song or lyric or reason that made them fall for their favorites – I still understand that not every band is THE band. Some are just fun, mindless songs – my recent fave in this category was that dang Iggy Azalea song. Other music is beautiful or atmospheric or what you listened to during your high school years, your college years, etc. But there are very few bands that deliver their music like a punch to the gut or an arrow to your heart, as she describes. They are rare and special and should absolutely be cherished.

What Taylor got wrong“…the music industry is not dying…it’s just coming alive.”

The music industry isn’t most definitely not just coming alive – that happened back in the late 1950s. It’s dead and has been for awhile. What it IS doing, like every other industry on the face of the planet, is going through a massive rebirth while it tries to figure out how to harness the power of the Internet – a tool that rocked our world in a way I don’t think we’ll truly understand for another decade or two.

The platinum albums and return to buying full length records TSwift waxes semi-poetic about is a thing of the past. Speaking as a music fan, bands that still subscribe to this idea are completely out of touch with how we, as fans, access music and are never going to get anywhere. (This is the reason I lose patience with my beloved Hanson brothers – they still ask us, as fans, to call our local radio stations and request their music. Seriously, boys? You broke up with your label more than a decade ago. I’m sorry, I love you…but you’re never getting played on Top 40 radio again. It’s time to move on.)

As fans, we are given more access to our favorite bands than ever before because of the Internet. When they stop in our towns on tour, we feel more connected to them because we saw what they thought about the latest Games of Thrones episode on Twitter Sunday night. We saw what they ate for lunch on the bus or in the van on Instagram earlier that day.

If I connect with your music, it’s because I connect with some piece of you that’s reflected in your music. And that’s how you harness the power of the Internet and grow that band/fan relationship.

You don’t have to give your life away but allow me to connect with you on small things here and there, and I become a genuine fan who will buy every album you make and follow you to the ends of the earth – no middle man label exec necessary. (This is how I became the girl who follows Quiet Company around Texas. Seriously. A couple Twitter conversations, and those poor guys can’t get rid of me now.)

“In mentioning album sales, I’d like to point out that people are still buying albums, but now they’re buying just a few of them. They are buying only the ones that hit them like an arrow through the heart or have made them feel strong or allowed them to feel like they really aren’t alone in feeling so alone.”In my humble opinion, we as music fans are buying less of your label-made albums because there’s less hit-them-like-an-arrow-through-the-heart albums to buy, plain and simple.

Look, when we live in a world where the Beyonce vs. Freddie Mercury meme exists…it’s because music fans aren’t stupid. We recognize good, quality music when we hear it, and we know it doesn’t take the record label powerhouse to accomplish that. Sometimes, all it really takes is one guy.

The problem here is music isn’t sacred to the music industry. Labels buy the formulas that work because in an uncertain industry, they want the guarantee they’ll make their money back.

Fair.

But that means they don’t care about the meaningful lyrics or lush musical arrangements that sound like nothing else you’ve ever heard. And as labels continue to buy their formula bands and pass on the ones making meaningful music, there are going to be less hit-them-like-an-arrow-through-the-heart albums to buy.

Which means we, as music fans, must take it upon ourselves to go outside the radio and box stores with a tiny music section to find our music. We have to take an active role in hunting for and discovering the music that matters to us – not rely on someone else to tell us what that music is or where to find it.

“In the YouTube generation we live in, I walked out onstage every night of my stadium tour last year knowing almost every fan had already seen the show online. To continue to show them something they had never seen before, I brought out dozens of special guest performers to sing their hits with me.”

Poor you and your stadium tour woes while I sit here trying to drag my friends to see every last local band I can because I want to support meaningful musicians.

Sorry, now that the snark is out of the way…

This is the one thing I have to disagree with the most. Yes, we can see your show on YouTube after tour stop #1, but even with the popularity of sites where artists can host a live streaming event to play a show for the entire Internet…there’s still something incredibly special about buying your ticket, going to a show and not just hearing but experiencing the music live – even if you know exactly how the show is going to go.

After 35 Hanson shows, I know that every single one is going to be: 3-4 upbeat songs, 1-2 mid tempo songs that bridge into a 4-5 song acoustic set, maybe a solo by 2 band members (all 3 if we’re really lucky), and then another mix of 10 mid tempo and upbeat songs, a cover and 2 encore songs.

And you know what? 35 shows. I keep going because the music is good in my world, not because I want to be surprised. God help us if we, as music fans, ever lose interest in the beautifully simple act of live music.

Go on your tour. Play your shows. And don’t try to out-do yourself. Just be you and play the music. That’s all we really want live.

Why the future of the music industry is up to fans – like you & meTSwift is a little right but mostly misses the mark for me with this rose infested view of the music industry. So what great solutions do I have? How do we make this all work? How do we ensure the quality music we love keeps getting made by the bands we love, the ones who are writing the soundtrack to our lives as we live them?

BUY MUSIC! And buy a record as directly from the band (on their website, at a show) as possible so they get as much of the money as possible.GO SEE THEM LIVE!Nothing beats putting your money where your mouth is and showing up to see them live.BUY MERCH!Lots and lots of merch. Bands get the most bang for your buck from merch.SHARE THE LOVE! Tell your friends about the music you love and why they might love it to. And trust me, a personally recommended band is going to go a lot further than a Facebook post saying, “Hey, check them out!”

Look, the Internet changed everything, and that’s why the music industry is where it is right now. The beautiful thing about it is that we, as fans, have the power to choose our own music. We don’t need a label to make music happen – we just need to support the bands we love so they can keep making the music we love.

You can read every article you want on how the industry has changed and where it’s going to go. But if you ask me – the fan – what I think about where it’s going?